English
EspañolA marriage´s union and happiness originate in the husband and wife, not the outside world. They stem from daily love, not from some utopic abstract doctrine. Ideas don´t love. The thought a plate of chicken does not feed us or does not satiate our hunger. The same can be said about the thought of loving.
Text
“We have also proposed a far too abstract and almost artificial theological ideal of marriage, far removed from the concrete situations and practical possibilities of real families. (…) has not helped to make marriage more desirable and attractive, but quite the opposite.” (The Joy of Love, n.36)
Commentary
To love is to love a concrete, real person who is here at our side. Each husband and wife embody real conjugal love in the moments they joyfully, sacrificially, or assiduously embrace each other and give themselves in return.
Properly speaking, there is no such thing as marriage, or even a person, except in the mind as abstract ideas. In reality, what exists is each singular person, the concrete and unrepeatable “you” and “me.” The same goes for marriage. The only one that truly exists and lives is the concrete and singular one created by a particular husband and wife.
Like each of our persons –yours and mine– each marriage has its own unique story. It is written together by this husband and wife. Both have to preserve their particular conjugal union to make it grow, restore its health, and combat its fatigue. Where? Amid ordinary circumstances in their daily lives.
It is possible for us to live in that alienated simplicity of believing marriage is an external and generic institution, nothing more than a structure and functions which establishes a doctrine in the form of a one-size-fits-all standard. As if it were enough to adhere to this mental structure regardless of actually living it out in everyday reality. We could be so stupid, in such cases, as to complain that this marriage –the external and abstract doctrinal structure– does not work and then ask ourselves why that might be.
One of the significant challenges of our time is for new generations to view marriage and their life joined in a union as a concrete, real, possible, and attractive love story. This challenges the exemplary testimony parents and elders can bear witness to and the education they can provide.
When it comes to actually loving one another, doctrinalisms that contain vital voids, in addition to examples of hypocrisy and apparent failures, have distorted the richness of conjugal love and marriage. They have originated much confusion, fear, and little hope in achieving a lifelong love. Caricatures of marriage and family, conflicts, infidelities, and divorces have caused many to opt for other union forms. Other forms that are not exempt from failure neither enrich them nor help them develop themselves wholesomely.